Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: Sometimes, when you begin an affair, you purposely try very hard not to think about your spouse. You do this because the guilt would be overwhelming if you did not. However, this can become difficult when the other person in the affair always wants information about your spouse and about your marriage. You might find yourself becoming quite protective of your spouse when you aren’t sure why. This can be confusing and you may wish that you’d never started the affair in the first place.

Someone might explain: “I am not proud of myself for cheating. I don’t have a huge excuse for it either, except that I didn’t intend for it to be any lasting thing. I just wanted to take a bit of a break from my life and then go back to it later. I was not going to lie about who I was. The other person knows that I am married. To my credit, I did not hide this. But increasingly, she wants to know details about my wife. She asks about how my wife and I met, what my wife does for a living, what my wife looks like, what my wife’s hobbies are, and the list goes on and on. She asked me when was the last time I slept with my wife. I honestly don’t know how to answer these questions and now I regret having the affair. How am I supposed to answer this? She almost seems obsessed with my wife.”

I would not give any direct answers because she could be fishing in this way because she wants to know about her competition. She wants to know about the state of your marriage because she wonders about the future of your relationship with HER. As such, she may one day try to contact your wife or to initiate a relationship or to dialogue with her. Put yourself in your wife’s shoes. Would you want a strange woman inserting herself into your life because your husband had an affair? If this was another man, would you want him finding out information about you?

I admit right up front that I am very biased here. I went through an affair and it was a horrible time in my life, which is why my best suggestion would be to tell the other woman nothing about your wife. Instead, tell her that you made a mistake by being unfaithful and that you are very sorry you involved her. You want to be very direct and you want for it to be clear that you will not change your mind in ending the affair.

After that, you want to do whatever is necessary to protect your wife. You’ll need to decide if you want to tell your wife about the affair yourself (if you think the other woman might try to contact her.) Do whatever is necessary to put your wife and her wellbeing first.

It’s not clear how you feel about your marriage or whether you want to attempt to save it, but these thoughts are less immediate than the safety and wellbeing of your wife. You may be confused as to why you feel so protective of her and so reluctant to give out information. I’d suggest that, deep in your heart, you know that your wife is the innocent party. Even if your marriage wasn’t perfect, your wife is totally unaware that someone else is taking an interest in her because of very unsavory reasons (that are not her fault.)

That’s why you are having second thoughts about sharing any information. You suspect that this isn’t fair to your wife and it most certainly is not in her best interest. You feel like breaking off the affair because you know that it’s reaching dangerous territory and that the other woman’s interest in your life outside of your relationship with her means that she may not be as content as you are to have this be a short term relationship that means nothing. She may be planning a long term relationship that means a great deal to her. You’re already having doubts, so it seems logical to end this before things get worse for all involved. Yes, people may get emotionally hurt. But it’s better to limit the hurt because I’d suspect the pain would be worse the longer the affair goes on.

I’d apologize for getting her involved in my mistake, but I would make it very clear that it was a mistake that must end immediately and that will not be repeated. Then, I’d do everything in my power to make sure that my wife is spared as much pain as is possible, since none of this was her doing. And I’d try to make sure that, regardless of what happens in my marriage, I do the right thing by my wife and have this never happen again in my future relationships.

You can’t reverse the past, but you can protect your wife moving forward by minimizing the access that the other woman has to her.  Right now, your first priority should be the well being of your family.   My husband took that stance and, as angry as I was at him at the time, I did appreciate that later.  You can read more about our recovery on my blog http://surviving-the-affair.com

 

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